What used to be a house of cards has turned into a reservoirSitting on the edge of the metal chair in the frost, I can see my breath. Good. I can't feel my heartbeat anymore through all of the scar tissue so any outward indicator that my life continues is a blessing. Or maybe it's a curse. Maybe I'm the curse. Maybe the sun only rises to sear my visage from their corneas and maybe the sun doesn't even rise, maybe it's a projection onto the wall opposite the window to make me think life continues on while I hunker down behind the barred door.
Save the tears that were waterfalling
Let's go swim tonight, darling
And once outside the undertow
Just you and me, and nothing more
If not for love, I would be drowning
I've seen it work both ways
But I am up riding high amongst the waves
Where I can feel like I have a soul that has been saved
Where I can feel like I've put away my early grave
Maybe I haven't been paying attention. I am too busy always stacking letters, coloring black inside all of the lines and falling in love to see anything up to and including the hand in front of my face. I see eyes and then teeth. I see smiles and frowns and distracted expressions. I see dead people too but that's a line from a movie and I don't like the expressions that transform their faces when I say that, even when things are fine. Even when I'm only teasing. Which I hardly ever do because poor taste doesn't change with the light, there is no sunset on class and decorum is required at all times.
Call it Bridget's School of Etiquette and Good Graces, call it a freakshow, call it yours. No one cares, we are far too busy being distracted by one other.
Lochlan's standing with his hands in his pockets. Probably turning the flint wheel of his lighter until his thumb blackens into a permanent groove. He does it slowly, partly to keep the cadence with his mind and partly so he doesn't set his pocket alight. He's done that before. Four times, if one is counting, but one isn't because, as I said, we are far too busy being distracted by one another.
You have to pay attention. If you don't, this won't work.
He's wearing a corduroy suitcoat but it's grey, not green. If he wore green he would resemble a leprechaun, and that just wouldn't do. Black vest. Burgundy button-down shirt and jeans. Black fedora. Black tennis shoes. This is his busking uniform, for lack of a more succinct description, and it's perfect. Part showman, part functional. Deep pockets so he won't lose things. Comfortable arms for throwing torches and then easy to remove top pieces until he is in pants and shoes only. Hat to pass later, though he doesn't pass it so much as hold it out for bills and spare change.
The last time he held the hat out for me I emptied my pockets into it. I had a fifty-dollar bill, three fives and seven bobby pins. He brought me back the pins later but I never saw the money again. He is true to his calling, and the money disappears. The gypsy in him manifests as a thief, and I know better than to give him what I want to keep.
But then he smiles and it's hard to remember so many things. Like the day of the week and the number after eleven and my last name (changed so many times I hardly use one anymore, sort of like Enya or Sting). Only when the light changes back to bright do I realize I've been robbed again and I go looking for payback and I find it on the cold stone patio in the bleak morning sun.
The wind and the sea conspire to take his words away from me but he holds onto them, his arm stretching up to the sky, waiting to catch fire on the way down, appearing to hold on to a burning balloon swept away by a renegade gale.
And I am transfixed.
I sit with my hands pulled up into the sleeves of my black wool coat (brand new, not like the threadbare robins egg blue one they all fell in love with that finally fell apart and boy, is that a euphemism for the princess or what?) but I am not the only one. Ben stands on the top step near the door. Frozen to the bone, frozen in time, if just for that moment, having stepped into a history where he has no footprints to follow and no memories to lead the way.
He'll take over, pulling me roughly by the hand as we try to stay on the middle road, sometimes veering courageously to the high road, sometimes settling in comfortably to the low one, but whichever road we take is hard for me to manage because Ben walks fast and he won't let go. I'm at once grateful and fed up and overwhelmed and bemused by what I see here, that's for certain. I'm not the only one who admires the red curls and the lower stage charm of a different kind of showman. I'm not the only one idolizing the wrong people.
But you have to catch Ben in the right light, or you would see nothing at all.